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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434893">job opportunities</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chitra_Rive/pseuds/Chitra_Rive'>Chitra_Rive</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(i love him a lot but helen does not), (just a note: this fic is mean to michael bc helen is mean to michael), A few other characters are mentioned - Freeform, Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, SO, Short One Shot, helen does not have time for michael's identity crisis, helen is a bitch and i like her so much, i didn't think i had any real thoughts on helen but then i sat down and this happened, no beta we die like michael, sat down and wrote this in one second, this takes place sometime after 131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:23:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>621</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24434893</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chitra_Rive/pseuds/Chitra_Rive</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"I am at least as much ‘Helen Richardson’ as you are the ‘Jonathan Sims’ that first joined this Institute. Things change. People change. It happens." -MAG 131</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>job opportunities</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>yesterday i didn't really care abt helen but today i sat down and this came out. have fun</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Helen Richardson did not want to be the avatar of the Spiral. She did not want to be trapped in a hallway for weeks on end, with only a brief respite of some kind of hope that she spent going to the </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eye’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>domain, of all places (Could have been time worse spent. She did like being friends with the Archivist.). She did not want to be pursued in said hallways by the previous avatar, Michael, who had seemed so terrifying then, but who she now realized was a mess who couldn’t get himself together and was extremely easy to kill, really. She did not want to have her mind torn to pieces in an endless labyrinth.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But on the other hand, she hadn’t wanted to be a real estate agent either! She’d wanted to be an actor, when she was younger, but simply… fell into the job, and it became routine, boring and uninteresting as so much adult life was. And she’d been very, very, good at it. She was very good at being an avatar of the Spiral, too, in her opinion. She didn’t always do what it asked of her, but she had more fun than she ever had in her old job. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She’d been guilty about what she had to do, at first. Spent hours pacing those endless hallways that she could not escape even when she became part of them. She’d wondered if she was a monster, if it was worth it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The answer was, yes she was, and that it was worth it to her, and that she really shouldn’t have wasted so much time thinking about it. Guilt was a sub-optimal state of existence. And it wasn’t like being philosophical changed anything. No matter how long she contemplated the halls, she was still </span>
  <em>
    <span>trapped. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Even now, being in them, especially if she was entering back in from somewhere outside, could send her panicking, worried that this time she wouldn’t be able to make herself an exit. It was silly of her to worry, of course. Those hallways were </span>
  <em>
    <span>hers. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They didn’t look it, though. The wallpaper was garish and black on yellow made it look like the floors were about to sting someone. The mirrors weren’t necessary anymore- as far as she knew, they specifically had been to torment Michael Shelley, who didn’t seem to be able to decide if he was a person or not. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Helen </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>who she was. Just because she’d changed, didn’t mean that she was a whole other person. There’d been an odd haziness at first, but the Spiral didn’t actually take over people. The entities were far too removed for that, and if anyone was likely to be taken over, it was probably an avatar of the Web. (Not that she cared what those </span>
  <em>
    <span>spiders </span>
  </em>
  <span>were doing. Ugh.) Perhaps she didn’t make a good avatar of the Spiral after all. She enjoyed making people doubt themselves and question their reality, but she was really quite a blunt person. To herself, at least. She wasn’t twisted up in her own lies and deception.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>(That was a lie. This is the truth- Helen Richardson is the Distortion, in the same way that Jonathan Sims is the Archives, and she is as much herself as he is- which is to say, the same person, wrapped up in trauma and forces beyond their control. She has decided not to suffer for what she has done, but that is not the sort of thing you can decide not to do, and so she is lying to herself that it is.) </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Helen gave the hallways a once-over, armed with a delightfully metaphysical paint roller and wallpaper scraper. It was time to do some redecorating.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>comment if you liked!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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